:00:12. > :00:14.There are 200,000 people working in the building trade in Scotland. But
:00:14. > :00:23.the building trade in Scotland. But can you spot the professionals from
:00:23. > :00:30.the cowboys? I'm in Edinburgh, a city renowned for its magnificent
:00:30. > :00:32.architecture. But I've been looking at its attempts to conserve these
:00:32. > :00:42.buildings and I've uncovered allegations of fraud and
:00:42. > :01:04.
:01:04. > :01:07.institutional corruption at the Edinburgh has some of the most
:01:07. > :01:12.historic buildings in the world. But could an attempt to save that
:01:12. > :01:22.history sometimes be hastening its decline? And ripping off ordinary
:01:22. > :01:23.
:01:23. > :01:29.scots at the same time. In Comely Bank near the centre of Edinburgh,
:01:29. > :01:34.that's what Bruce Thompson thinks. We had a minor roof leak, which we
:01:34. > :01:36.were quoted around �760 by a contractor. But to make sure all
:01:37. > :01:43.his neighbours were happy and to make his historic tenement
:01:44. > :01:47.watertight again they called an officer from the council. He had
:01:47. > :01:51.one quick look at it and decided that it probably needed a new roof
:01:51. > :02:01.and would report back to his boss. And the next thing we heard we had
:02:01. > :02:06.
:02:06. > :02:09.a Statutory Notice telling us that The power is unique to Edinburgh.
:02:09. > :02:12.Other places have statutory notices but this specific power is unique
:02:12. > :02:15.to Edinburgh. The statutory notice Bruce is referring to is a power
:02:15. > :02:17.that only the City of Edinburgh Council has, to keep its unique
:02:17. > :02:20.buildings in good order. A superpower if you like. It means
:02:20. > :02:27.owners have to pay for the work stipulated by the council whether
:02:27. > :02:34.they like it or not. But back at Bruce's, it seemed the builders
:02:34. > :02:37.weren't just on the roof. Work went on and on and on, more and more
:02:37. > :02:40.scaffolding kept appearing, and we began to get a bit worried. As it
:02:40. > :02:43.turns out, Bruce was right to be worried. The council decided his
:02:43. > :02:49.building didn't just need a new roof, but a whole load of other
:02:49. > :02:54.work. We just kept seeing great big chunks of stone being carted up
:02:54. > :02:56.onto the roof and the contractors were polite and civil. We didn't
:02:56. > :02:59.have any problems that way but they'd obviously been advised that
:02:59. > :03:04.they weren't to speak to us about anything. There was certainly no
:03:04. > :03:07.communication at all about cost. And we received a letter and it
:03:07. > :03:15.tells the surveyor quite clearly on no account give these clients any
:03:16. > :03:18.indication of cost as they do change day by day. So you were
:03:18. > :03:22.expected to effectively have your cheque book open and let somebody
:03:22. > :03:24.else fill in the numbers? That's what it seemed to be like, yes.
:03:25. > :03:28.frustration, he used freedom of information laws to ask for details.
:03:28. > :03:31.He felt it was the only way he could find out what the builders
:03:31. > :03:41.were doing to his own home. Finally he received files and files of
:03:41. > :03:44.paperwork. But they weren't exactly enlightening. This is edited,
:03:44. > :03:54.blacked out to the extent that there's literally nothing to see,
:03:54. > :04:01.
:04:01. > :04:04.page after page of it, I think. Another one, another one. I mean, I
:04:04. > :04:07.don't know what they think they're going to give away, but it is just
:04:07. > :04:10.stupid. Some of the Freedom of Information responses literally
:04:10. > :04:13.told him nothing at all. But tucked away in the papers was an email
:04:13. > :04:22.from a council official, describing Bruce's attempts to find out about
:04:22. > :04:25.the work at his own home as a moan letter. When you saw this?
:04:25. > :04:29.Horrified with that, horrified. And we sent that to the Chief Executive.
:04:29. > :04:32.Do you feel that's a respectable way to treat someone? I feel it's a
:04:32. > :04:34.disgusting way to treat anybody. The council now admit the email was
:04:34. > :04:38.totally unacceptable. The Council decided to use its unique Statutory
:04:38. > :04:42.Notice power once again. This time to get builders to overhaul the
:04:42. > :04:52.back wall at Bruce's tenement whilst they were fixing the roof. A
:04:52. > :04:54.
:04:54. > :05:03.job costing tens of thousands extra. It's not evenly done, it's up one
:05:03. > :05:07.side not the other side. There's cracks all-over the stonework.
:05:07. > :05:10.Bruce says he was told it would cost around �760 to fix the leak.
:05:10. > :05:14.But after the council got involved his bill leapt to more than
:05:14. > :05:18.�300,000. Almost a third of a million pounds.
:05:18. > :05:28.On a scale of one to 10, how happy are you with the work that has been
:05:28. > :05:29.
:05:30. > :05:36.I hear of another case across the city where the council have put a
:05:36. > :05:41.statutory notice on the building. It's left the owners no choice
:05:41. > :05:47.about what work is getting done. It turns out Emma-Jane Condon has also
:05:47. > :05:50.had a leaky roof in her tenement. lot of times I'd get home and I'd
:05:50. > :05:54.look out there with all the green meshing hanging down and just think
:05:54. > :05:59.it was never going to end. Emma- Jane and her neighbours were told
:05:59. > :06:05.they could expect a �90,000 repair bill to fix the roof. But then
:06:05. > :06:10.curious things started to happen. So I was in here and the banging
:06:10. > :06:13.was going on and I saw that crack appear. The council had been using
:06:13. > :06:15.their superpower again. Emma-Jane got another statutory notice and
:06:15. > :06:22.then another and another allowing the builder to do expensive
:06:22. > :06:27.stonework. Scaffolding went back up. Sandstone stripped out from the
:06:27. > :06:30.walls of their building started appearing in the skip. The trouble
:06:30. > :06:34.was by the time we'd realised what they were doing they'd taken half
:06:34. > :06:37.of it out. One of my neighbours who's experienced in this kind of
:06:37. > :06:41.stonework - he works on buildings as an engineer - had looked at some
:06:41. > :06:45.of the stonework in the skip and it was his view that there was no need
:06:45. > :06:47.for that stone to be taken out of the building. So, they were taking
:06:47. > :06:51.out perfectly good stone and replacing it with hew stone,
:06:51. > :06:54.unnecessarily. When the scaffolding came down, the building appeared to
:06:54. > :07:00.have been given a makeover most of which, Emma-Jane believes, was
:07:00. > :07:04.simply cosmetic. The last we heard about the total cost of the
:07:04. > :07:07.sandstone was it was a quarter of a million pounds. I think that what
:07:07. > :07:16.they've done is seen this as an opportunity to do a Rolls-Royce job
:07:16. > :07:22.on a building that wasn't necessary. And we can't afford the Rolls-Royce.
:07:22. > :07:28.Emma-Jane and her neighbours expected a bill of around �90,000.
:07:28. > :07:32.It's now around �300,000. I don't know if the ultimate conclusion of
:07:32. > :07:42.this will be that I'll have to sell the flat because I can't afford the
:07:42. > :07:44.
:07:44. > :07:47.I wanted to know if these bills could in fact be the real cost of
:07:47. > :07:52.what was needed to be done. Was it possible that the owners simply
:07:52. > :08:02.didn't want to pay? So I called in a couple of experts to look at
:08:02. > :08:04.
:08:04. > :08:07.Gordon Murdie has been a quantity surveyor in Edinburgh for 38 years.
:08:07. > :08:13.He has detailed experience of the statutory notice system and is used
:08:13. > :08:15.as an expert witness in court. John Addison is a conservation engineer
:08:15. > :08:25.brought in to work on high-profile projects across the country,
:08:25. > :08:28.
:08:28. > :08:34.including Historic Scotland buildings. This is Bruce Thompson's
:08:34. > :08:37.situation, he's in Comely Bank Place. John, you've taken a good
:08:37. > :08:43.look at this property. assessment is that probably 95% of
:08:43. > :08:49.it wasn't necessary. It seems that they got a little bit carried away
:08:49. > :08:54.with themselves. It certainly surprised me that work on that
:08:54. > :09:02.scale should have been carried out. The contractors said that they were
:09:02. > :09:11.instructed to do all this work by the council. At Queen's Park Avenue,
:09:11. > :09:14.our experts examined Emma-Jane's �300,000 worth of work. I just
:09:14. > :09:17.wonder if they'd had a conservator to work on some of these features
:09:17. > :09:20.up there, trying to reproduce that. Looks a bit rough. As well as
:09:20. > :09:23.examining Emma-Jane's building we showed them a survey done six years
:09:23. > :09:29.before the first statutory notice. Our experts say it gave no
:09:29. > :09:34.indication major works was needed back then. They talked us through
:09:34. > :09:37.their findings. If I could just refer to this drawing which
:09:37. > :09:46.suggests the extent of the stonework repair as scheduled by
:09:46. > :09:50.the council, this doesn't look like �300,000 worth of work either.
:09:50. > :09:57.asked Gordon to give his opinion on a statutory notice. We asked if it
:09:57. > :10:00.was clear what work needed to be done. This is an enormous latitude.
:10:00. > :10:04.Repair, renew all defective and cracked stonework. The first step
:10:04. > :10:07.at that point is to define what exactly is to be repaired, what is
:10:07. > :10:13.to be renewed a stone schedule, a marked up drawing, define the costs.
:10:13. > :10:15.There isn't a single repair noted. So it strikes me as very odd that
:10:15. > :10:18.you've got an open-ended description of work on the stat
:10:18. > :10:26.notice, which starts off with the word repair and the record drawing
:10:26. > :10:28.as we see it doesn't actually have a single repair. Our experts have
:10:28. > :10:36.found unnecessary work, over- charging even work that might make
:10:36. > :10:38.a building worse. Driving around the city I can see
:10:38. > :10:43.how Edinburgh's international reputation hangs on the quality of
:10:43. > :10:48.its architecture. But perhaps Bruce's and Emma-Jane's were
:10:48. > :10:53.isolated cases? Well, I've come across dozens of people complaining
:10:53. > :11:03.about statutory notices right across the city. Each case is more
:11:03. > :11:05.
:11:05. > :11:08.At Comely Bank Road, thousand of pounds of work was about to be
:11:08. > :11:11.carried out under statutory notice. But James McLean who's one of the
:11:11. > :11:16.owners challenged it. He says when he did, the council agreed some of
:11:16. > :11:20.the work didn't need to be done. In Trafalgar Street in Leith, Bonita
:11:20. > :11:23.Russell owns a cafe. She's having to close the business she's run for
:11:23. > :11:27.more than 20 years after the bill for roof repairs soared to almost
:11:27. > :11:37.�200,000. And also in Leith, on Commercial Street, Jeremy Pascoe
:11:37. > :11:42.
:11:42. > :11:44.and his neighbours are expecting a It was becoming clear to me that
:11:44. > :11:54.Bruce and Emma-Jane weren't the only ones unhappy with statutory
:11:54. > :11:55.
:11:55. > :11:59.I've arranged to meet someone who used to issue the kind of statutory
:11:59. > :12:02.notices we're talking about. His job was to decide what work needed
:12:03. > :12:06.to be done, get builders on site and then oversee the work. I'm
:12:06. > :12:16.hoping he will be able to give me a really good insight into what was
:12:16. > :12:25.
:12:25. > :12:30.actually going on in the department He told me he had resigned, and he
:12:30. > :12:35.was worried some of his colleagues were too eager to hand out
:12:35. > :12:41.statutory notices. Basically, I think too many statutory notices
:12:41. > :12:46.were being served by my colleagues. It seems some for got they were
:12:46. > :12:50.serving the public and were too focused object on serving in thes.
:12:50. > :12:57.As a surveyor your job was to determine what work was needed. I
:12:57. > :13:02.suspected that builders were leading the job, adding more work,
:13:02. > :13:05.and the officers were signing off the statutory notice. If council
:13:05. > :13:10.officials were encouraged to hand out statutory notices, it goes some
:13:10. > :13:18.way to explain the huge rise we've seen in Edinburgh. Over five years
:13:18. > :13:24.the value of the building work has soared from �9 million in 2005 to
:13:24. > :13:29.�30 million in 2010. Some people have got very rich. This money can
:13:29. > :13:34.be a money spinner. The council also gets a stake. For it is role
:13:34. > :13:41.it gets 15% of the final bill. If the costs go up, everyone's a
:13:41. > :13:45.winner, except, of course, the homeowner who has to pay up. But
:13:45. > :13:49.statutory notices were never meant to be like this. The power was
:13:49. > :13:55.brought in to protect historic buildings, and to protect the
:13:55. > :14:00.people on the streets below. In one instant she was with us, the next
:14:00. > :14:04.she was gone. 11 years ago a waitress serve at Ryan's Bar in
:14:04. > :14:07.Princes Street was killed after two foot long stones fell on her from
:14:07. > :14:12.the third floor of the building. Eight people were injured. It
:14:12. > :14:16.happened in the afternoon when the street was packed. Christine Foster,
:14:16. > :14:20.from Australia, died in hospital less than an hour later. Her deaths
:14:21. > :14:26.with a cruel reminder of the importance of looking after
:14:26. > :14:29.Edinburgh's historic buildings. need statutory notice system, but
:14:29. > :14:34.we need the right statutory notice system. Not just in Edinburgh, but
:14:34. > :14:39.across the country. We need to preserve our built heritage, it's
:14:39. > :14:42.absolutely vital. Ewan Aitken is a minister and the former lead r of
:14:42. > :14:47.the City of Edinburgh Council. But for the last two years he has been
:14:47. > :14:53.raising concerns about the way the power is being used. There are
:14:53. > :14:57.issues about how decisions are made and what constitutes the need for a
:14:57. > :15:01.statutory notice and then once that's in place how that work seems
:15:01. > :15:05.to expand and expand and expand, all at the cost of the residents
:15:05. > :15:09.who have no communication and who end up paying the bill. He says he
:15:09. > :15:14.has evidence that builders doing the statutory notice work were
:15:14. > :15:18.lining their own pockets. He claims that 13 addresses were charged for
:15:18. > :15:22.top quality materials while the builders actually used very cheep
:15:22. > :15:27.alternatives, more appropriate for a garden shed than historic
:15:27. > :15:35.buildings. Surely, that would be fraud? A fraud, he says, he has the
:15:35. > :15:39.paperwork to prove. This is the prime example of what I to be, at
:15:39. > :15:43.least, illegal, if not corrupt, if those are two separate things, of
:15:43. > :15:47.activity going on. There is hard evidence of this. That moons people
:15:47. > :15:50.are being defrauded, in my view. It's not good enough to say, well,
:15:50. > :15:54.we just thought we would put this down instead. The specialify
:15:54. > :15:57.kaition, for which people are paying, should have been put on the
:15:57. > :16:01.roofs. It seems to me to be pretty black-and-white. You wonder what
:16:01. > :16:06.that means in terms of all the other work that has gone on.
:16:06. > :16:09.Whether or not it was what people were paying for. Ewan Aitken has
:16:09. > :16:13.passed this information to the police's Specialist Fraud Unit. So,
:16:13. > :16:17.we know that builders are being investigated. We know that
:16:17. > :16:24.homeowners are feeling they have been ripped off. We know that costs
:16:24. > :16:28.have escalated. There's more. Within the council we had heard the
:16:28. > :16:33.relationship between some officers and builders was far too cosy.
:16:33. > :16:35.There are allegations of trips to lap-dancing clubs. This year,
:16:36. > :16:40.around 15% of the council's Property Conservation Department
:16:40. > :16:45.have been suspended. The council says the suspensions are,
:16:45. > :16:50."precautionary". We also know the council's hospitality records, up
:16:50. > :16:54.to 2009, have been lost. To find out more about this relationship
:16:54. > :17:00.between council officials and builders, possibly even amounting
:17:00. > :17:06.to corruption, I went back to our informant. He told me that the
:17:06. > :17:12.system was wide open to abuse, including bribery. In theory, it
:17:12. > :17:16.would have been easy to a add costs to the notice. The checks were lax.
:17:16. > :17:20.The contractor would get money they weren't entitled to. Once, a
:17:20. > :17:23.contractor offered me a free kitchen or a free bathroom. I
:17:23. > :17:27.suspect, if I'd said yes, it probably would have happened.he was
:17:27. > :17:32.throwing out a fishing line and seeing if I took the hook. I don't
:17:32. > :17:42.know what anyone else was offered. It was a relationship that, I think,
:17:42. > :17:43.
:17:43. > :17:47.We can't verify that what our surveyor is saying about the
:17:47. > :17:53.builders and council officials is true. But Lothian and Borders
:17:53. > :17:58.Police have now set up a fraud and corruption investigation. It even
:17:58. > :18:01.involves claims that a surveyor, within the council's Property
:18:01. > :18:08.Conservation Department, enjoyed holidays, paid for by a building
:18:08. > :18:11.contractor. We believe this contractor was given work totalling
:18:11. > :18:14.millions of pounds through the statutory notice repairs scheme. In
:18:14. > :18:18.fact, the more I look at the Property Conservation Department,
:18:18. > :18:22.the more worrying it seems. The most serious of all the allegations,
:18:22. > :18:25.we believe the police are looking at, is whether some council
:18:25. > :18:34.officials were taking bribes or a cut to give builders millions of
:18:34. > :18:40.pounds worth of work. This could amount to institutional corruption.
:18:40. > :18:46.How the council awarded contracts to builders is highly controversial.
:18:46. > :18:54.In our investigation, one company's name keeps cropping up, Action
:18:54. > :19:00.Building Contracts. We tracked down one job that Action were involved
:19:00. > :19:07.with at Newtoft Street in Gilmerton. Clark Wilson bought his flat there
:19:07. > :19:10.in 1998. In 200, the window above the Close came crashing down into
:19:10. > :19:13.the stairwell. Action Building Contracts were brought in by the
:19:13. > :19:18.council. The statutory notice instructed the builders to do some
:19:18. > :19:27.extra work, but not things like new guttering and a new chimney, which
:19:27. > :19:32.is exactly what Clark got, costing tens of thousands. You weren't even
:19:32. > :19:37.told this guttering needed to be replaced or any of the roof work?
:19:37. > :19:40.No, it had just been done. initial quote from Action was just
:19:40. > :19:44.over �25,000. When he and his neighbours received the final bill,
:19:44. > :19:51.the total cost of the building work had increased to almost �80,000. A
:19:51. > :19:55.figure that brought on a feeling of sheer panic. It was like a bad
:19:55. > :19:59.dream. You weren't going to get away from it. It's something that
:19:59. > :20:05.you continually worry about, the final bill. It's just out of my
:20:05. > :20:10.league. People just don't have that lying about. We have a dossier of
:20:10. > :20:15.information on Clark's case, our experts agreed to take a closer
:20:15. > :20:18.look. It would have been a simple job to re-point that crack and tidy
:20:18. > :20:23.tup. They have been examining the extra work carried out and how much
:20:23. > :20:31.it cost. What caught their eye was how the price of materials had
:20:31. > :20:36.jumped by the time it appeared in the final bill. The final account
:20:36. > :20:40.is your check out bill. I don't understand why something priced on
:20:40. > :20:44.the shelve at a certain rate, at the checkout, in the final account,
:20:44. > :20:47.is double the rate. It wouldn't happen in the supermarket, it
:20:47. > :20:51.certainly doesn't happen in construction contracts. In my line
:20:51. > :20:55.of work, I'd hang my head in shame if I ever had to report to the
:20:55. > :21:00.client that a job had leapt up like that without any cost control.
:21:00. > :21:03.According to our experts, Clark is the victim of gross overcharging.
:21:03. > :21:07.His final bill from Action was almost three times the initial
:21:07. > :21:10.quote. We have been investigating this story trout -- throughout the
:21:10. > :21:14.summer, hearing concerns about price rice rises and alleged
:21:14. > :21:17.corruption in the system. A few days ago we got hold of evidence
:21:17. > :21:20.that finally proved that council officials were breaking their own
:21:20. > :21:26.rules. That builders were making money out of contracts they
:21:26. > :21:36.shouldn't have been awarded. Once again, Action Building Contracts's
:21:36. > :21:39.
:21:39. > :21:43.name came up. This time, it was at Fowler Terrace in the Polwarth area.
:21:43. > :21:49.Trevor Thompson runs a business consultancy. The statutory notice
:21:49. > :21:52.arrived and the quotation seemed fair, but it didn't go quite as
:21:52. > :21:56.he'd expected. The materials used are breaking down the stone work
:21:56. > :21:59.rather than fix it. When Trevor Thompson looked at the break down
:21:59. > :22:07.of cost he found evidence, he says, the company had hidden charges in
:22:07. > :22:11.the final bill. What they've done, they have used this to fabricate
:22:11. > :22:16.�15,000 charge for scaffolding for additional times because they said
:22:16. > :22:20.the job was bigger than it was. This �15,000 is an additional cost
:22:20. > :22:26.borne by the people here, for this project. Two other builders have
:22:26. > :22:29.taken a look at these costs and the craftsmanship. They believe Trevor
:22:29. > :22:34.and his neighbours have been overcharged by �40,000. They will
:22:34. > :22:39.need to spend another �40,000 to fix all the problems. One of the
:22:39. > :22:45.reasons why the contractor won this was, apparently, that the other
:22:45. > :22:49.contracts had a heavy workload. Here we have an e-mail from the
:22:50. > :22:57.council's representative saying that the other -- indeed the other
:22:57. > :23:02.companies were in fact busy. This was a key bit of information I
:23:02. > :23:09.could check out for myself. We were in a building recession in 2008,
:23:09. > :23:13.when Action were awarded the contract. I've just come off the
:23:13. > :23:19.MOBILE PHONE RINGS To a contractor who said he was available for work.
:23:19. > :23:24.He was begging for work at the time. Another contractor said it was,
:23:24. > :23:27."jobs for the boys".he felt that some council officials were handing
:23:27. > :23:30.out work to favourite firms rather than the most competitive tender.
:23:30. > :23:34.In the space of two years, Action Building Contracts were paid nearly
:23:34. > :23:41.�2 million by the council. Throughout this time, they weren't
:23:41. > :23:44.on the council's approved list of frame work contractors. My gut
:23:44. > :23:50.feeling is that somebody has made from this. Why would somebody
:23:50. > :23:57.choose not to use the correct procurement system? There must be
:23:57. > :24:01.some element in there of gain because it's either neglect, or
:24:01. > :24:08.personal gain, I'm afraid. Action Building Contracts declined to
:24:09. > :24:12.comment. As did the council on this case. As well as questions about
:24:12. > :24:16.individual building firms, Ewan Aitken, the former council leader,
:24:16. > :24:23.is worried that this scandal has undermined confidence in the
:24:23. > :24:26.council itself. I have seen what appears to be strange decisions,
:24:26. > :24:30.unexplained decisions, about who gets work, and that worries me
:24:30. > :24:34.deeply. I've been asking questions, public questions, questions on the
:24:34. > :24:38.public record about that and not got answers answers. Do you believe
:24:38. > :24:42.that there are people on the pay roll on the City of Edinburgh
:24:42. > :24:48.Council who are corrupt? convinced there is something that
:24:48. > :24:53.has been illegal that has gone on and that has involved a few council
:24:53. > :24:58.officers. He believes the situation is so serious that it warrants
:24:58. > :25:04.radical action. I think we need to review every case, at least back to
:25:04. > :25:08.2005, to say - how was the notice put in place? What was the decision
:25:08. > :25:13.about what work needed to be done? How was that communicated to the
:25:13. > :25:18.residents? How was the tender put in place and who got the work and
:25:18. > :25:25.why they got the work? Until we do that, we won't have understood
:25:25. > :25:29.whether or not people have paid money who shouldn't have had to
:25:29. > :25:33.because because of the practice that has again on in the council.
:25:33. > :25:38.think if you look back at the statutory notices served in the
:25:38. > :25:41.last five years you would find hundreds were invalid. If
:25:41. > :25:46.homeowners in Edinburgh looked closely at the justification for
:25:46. > :25:49.why their notice was issued they might be shocked. In a statement
:25:49. > :25:53.the City of Edinburgh Council said they commissioned an independent
:25:53. > :25:58.auditor to investigate allegations of wrong-doing. They added that the
:25:58. > :26:03.division -- division to have an independent investigation was, "a
:26:03. > :26:10.sign of how seriously we take the complaints and concerns that have
:26:10. > :26:13.been raised an our commitment to addressing them". A report updating
:26:13. > :26:19.councillors about the audit or's investigation is expected to go
:26:19. > :26:22.before the full council next month. With about 3,000 statutory notices
:26:22. > :26:26.served every year and many home owners in Edinburgh now contracting
:26:26. > :26:31.lawyers, this could become an expensive legal nightmare for City
:26:31. > :26:41.of Edinburgh Council. But just how serious? I think it's, deeply
:26:41. > :26:43.
:26:43. > :26:48.serious. It's tens of millions, potentially. The council officials
:26:48. > :26:57.tend to think they are little Gods sitting on their pedestals, just
:26:57. > :27:00.got every power in the world,. Just do exactly what they want. If you
:27:01. > :27:08.look at all the scaffolding up around Edinburgh, it's all over the
:27:08. > :27:11.place. So, it felt like it was a licence for them to print money.
:27:11. > :27:16.I'm just jord Joe Bloggs on the street. Most people haven't been up
:27:16. > :27:21.on a roof, or done anything like that in their life. You take it
:27:21. > :27:24.from the experts are meant to be professionals who you can trust.
:27:24. > :27:30.Not so long ago the City's statutory notice system was the
:27:30. > :27:34.envy of other cities around Britain. That system is in a mess. In the
:27:34. > :27:38.coming months, the council's own investigation will be reporting
:27:38. > :27:43.back, hone homeowners will be taking legal action and the police
:27:43. > :27:48.pursuing allegations of fraud and corruption. There's no doubt that
:27:48. > :27:51.Edinburgh's buildings need to be con served, but what we've
:27:51. > :27:56.uncovered could discredit the very system which was meant to protect
:27:56. > :28:00.them. This is Edinburgh. This is the world World Heritage Site. It
:28:00. > :28:03.has Historic Scotland, it has the National Trust. It has all the
:28:03. > :28:08.important bodies that have established the policies and fee
:28:08. > :28:14.loz loss fees for conservation in Scotland. For this to happen in the
:28:14. > :28:18.centre of this, the centre of excellence, if you like, suggests
:28:18. > :28:23.something terribly, terribly wrong. Do you think there will be